Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Hello, blog. It's been a while since I last wrote here. I was spending some time in a (figurative) cave, trying to understand a couple of things.
Last time we spoke, I was working on Polychart, a data visualization startup that was taking the flexibility of tools like Tableau and bringing it to the web. It’s a neat idea, really, and we built an awesome team behind the idea. It was also a great learning experience, being a first-time entrepreneur.

Judging by the past tense used in the last paragraph, you probably realize that this is not what I will be doing in the future. You’re right. We turned down the investment we were about to get, knowing that it wasn’t going to be the right path for us. We’ve just open sourced Polychart to share what we’ve built, to make it more useful as an easy way to visually explore databases. You should check it out if you haven’t already.

We hear many discussions about "finding oneself", especially from young people. We sometimes take to travelling, long periods of solitude, recklessness, or drugs to achieve that purpose. Ancient greeks, too, thought that “know thyself” is worthy enough of an aphorism to be carved in front of temples. Their interpretation of the aphorism might be slightly different, and involve fewer psychedelics. While Polychart was no psychedelic (for the most part), running a startup turned out to be a great way to find oneself.

What does it mean to know oneself? I interpret it as an understanding of one’s goals, likes, and dislikes. Knowing what you like is easy -- for me, I loved running the engineering organization and building the technical team. The hard part is drawing the line between bettering oneself, and attempting to be someone one is not. I thought that learning to sell and pitch would be things I could do to develop myself. Would I be able to eventually learn to be great at it? Maybe? Eventually I have to admit that, well, perhaps not. Perhaps I won't enjoy it. Perhaps my talents should be focused elsewhere.

So, I'm moving on.

Before saying anything else, I want to thank everyone who had supported Polychart, and had come along for the ride. I hope you got as much out of it as I did. Thank you --

Jeeyoung Kim: for starting this amazing journey with me and putting up with me for as long as you didSamsons Hu: for believing in Polychart when few others did, and taking it to the next levelFravic Fernando: for being a part of Polychart, the whole way throughTina Lorentz: for seeing and teaching us what we didn't know (seriously, I learned so much from you)Anjida, Sina, Alex: for teaching us the importance of team buildingZach Kocher: for supporting us when few others didRaymond Cheng: for understanding and being passionate about what we stood forTim McLean: for quickly picking up whatever expertise we lackedLuc Ritchie: for adapting to new roles when we needed itKevin Mendoza: for supporting us in one of the most interesting timesChristoph & Ronuk: for helping us with engineering expertise we did not haveMike Kirkup: for helping us in many, many different ways, for over two yearsBrett Shellhammer: for being our moral support, all the way through

Ted Livingston: for getting us started on this journey, and teaching us to pursue our passions

David Crow: for believing in us, and guiding us to choose Polychart

Ali Asaria: for funding us indirectly, in at least three different ways now?

Jesse Rodgers: for teaching us the importance of credibility and namedropping :)

Andy Yang: for believing in us, funding us, and understanding us when we moved on

William, AK, Dale: for providing guidance, assistance, and friendship

Darren, Danny, Peter: for providing many introductions

Lin Fan: for the many questions you answeredCameron Marlow: for inspiring me, supporting us, giving us confidence, and for being so kind...and everyone else who has helped us in this journey. Thank you.
I will be continuing to support Polychart whenever I can. I'd also like to introduce you to my new home, another startup in Toronto called Rubikloud. I'm really excited to tell you that I'll be joining Rubikloud as the VP of Engineering. The best part about Polychart was running its engineering operations, and so I'm really excited about this new role. You should check out Rubikloud, especially if you run an e-commerce shop or if you're a data scientist looking for your next step!